[ 143 ]
other Things, her Imagination made it work other Effects than it would have done.
When she had taken the Medicine it made her very sick, and, in a word, set her a Vomiting and Purging most violently, and that threw her into a high Fever.
In her Fever she was exceedingly struck in her Conscience with the Fact; and I could give a very pleasing Account from her own Mouth, of her after Reflections upon the criminal Part, which she was then convinced of, and began to be penitent for. But that Part is too serious for this Time of Day, and few of the Readers of our Times may be grave enough to relish it
But the Story turns upon another Part, being extremely afflicted at what she had done, and having no Body to give vent to her Mind about it, her Cousin, who had unhappily given her the Direction, being gone into the Country; I say, the want of her to vent her Thoughts, and ease her Mind to, joined to the Fever, made her delirious or light-headed; and in one of her Fits of Talking she knew not what, she unhappily betrayed the Secret, told what she had done to the Nurse that tended her, and she had Discretion little enough to tell it to her Husband's Mother, and she to her Son, the Lady's Husband.
It moved him with a variety of Passions, as, in particular, an Indignation at the horrid Fact, Anger at his Wife, who, though he loved to an Extreme, and had never shewn the least Unkindness to her before, yet he could not refrain, sick as she was, and even at Death's Door, to reproach her with it, and that in the bitterest Terms, which put her into a violent Agony,so
